


heart taking root

by LiveLaughLovex



Category: The Code (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Love Confessions, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:29:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27933112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiveLaughLovex/pseuds/LiveLaughLovex
Summary: When she was a little girl, maybe six or seven years old, Harper Li had a most favorite book, one that she insisted on being read to from each and every night, to the point that, by the time she’d turned nine, most of the pages were hanging on for dear life to the book’s spine. She was glad it'd been her favorite all those years, though, because in that moment, as she bled out in a mostly empty street right in the middle of a warzone, she couldn’t help but commiserate with poor Alexander and his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day./Or, Harper gets shot and tells Abe something she's been avoiding telling him, only to find out, after she wakes up, that she should never have been dreading the conversation in the first place. Ft. Maya the good friend, common sense speaker, and excellent wingwoman. (Who is she wingwoman-ing? No one's quite certain. Either way, she's brilliant at it.)
Relationships: John "Abe" Abraham/Harper Li
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	heart taking root

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from a quote by Richard Siken: "You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your _heart taking root_ in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for.”

When she was a little girl, maybe six or seven years old, Harper Li had a most favorite book, one that she insisted on being read to from each and every night, to the point that, by the time she’d turned nine, most of the pages were hanging on for dear life to the book’s spine. Still, she kept insisting, night after night, right up until her Aunt Francesca bought her the entire _Harry Potter_ series for her eleventh birthday and she was sucked in by the continuous problems of another fictitious boy. Still, in that moment, as she bled out in a mostly empty street right in the middle of a warzone, she couldn’t help but commiserate with Alexander and his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. She was pretty sure she had a pretty good idea of what he had gone through. Granted, the kid had probably never been shot by an enemy combatant from that _one_ rooftop they hadn’t had time to check before heading out, but she supposed the general sentiment was likely the same.

She was pretty sure she was dying. She’d never actually had a near-death experience up to that point, as surprising as that was for a Marine three years in. She’d come relatively close, that night in Syria, but she hadn’t been the one shot, in the head or anywhere else, and so she didn’t really count it. There was that time when she was fifteen and her mother randomly became insistent she try out figure-skating, but she didn’t figure that counted, either, as she’d suffered only a mild concussion and a severely bruised ego on her way back down to the ice after that ill-timed jump. But this time felt different. Probably because she had a pretty sizable hole in her size – one that Abe was still desperately trying to apply pressure to, even though Harper was pretty sure she’d lost the vast majority of her blood volume in that field of sand prior to the arrival of their reinforcements and was still, somehow, losing more – and the captain was looking at her in a way she’d never seen him look at anyone, before, and okay, maybe she was more than a little out of it, what with the bullet that was likely still lodged inside her, but she couldn’t help but smile up at him, a weak laugh escaping her when his only response was to suck in a deep breath as if she’d suddenly struck him square in the chest.

“You know,” she murmured, her speech slurred, “if you’re trying to make me think I’m _not_ dying, then it might be a good idea to let your face in on the plan.”

“You’re not dying,” he said sternly, in that tone of voice that assured her he believed what he was saying with every fiber of his being. “We’re less than two mikes out from Camp Dwyer, Li, so you are _not_ going to die on me. That’s an order, alright?”

“’m the same rank as you, now,” she reminded him, blinking up at him from beneath increasingly heavy eyelids. “Not the boss of me, anymore.”

“No,” he agreed thickly, “I’m not. But how about you listen to me anyway, alright? For old times’ sake?”

“’Kay,” she breathed, smiling up at him once more. “’m very fond of you, you know.”

He laughed, but it was a broken sound. “I’m very fond of you too, Harper.”

“Wasn’t at first,” she continued, voice little more than a whisper. “Thought you were an ass, if ’m being honest. But…” She trailed off to cough wetly, then continued. “…you grew on me.” Her eyes drifted shut. “Think I might be a little bit in love with you,” she breathed, blinking them back open at his insistence. “Actually, I know I am.” 

He’d grown even more afraid in the past few minutes, if that look in his eyes was anything to go by. “No, Harper, don’t do this,” he said firmly, though the words sounded more like a plea than an order. “You’re not on your deathbed right now, so this isn’t the time for deathbed confessionals.”

“Mm,” she murmured, smiling dazedly up at him. “Maybe not. Want you to know, though. Just in case it is.” She reached up a hand to rest against his cheek, blinking when she realized her palm was covered in her own blood. “Mm. Sorry about that,” she muttered contritely. “Seemed romantic in my head.”

“Don’t worry,” he breathed, smiling down at her. He was so obviously trying to hide the tears in his eyes, the fear coursing through his veins, that she didn’t have the heart to tell him he wasn’t doing the best at it. “It’ll wash off.”

“Yeah,” she sighed, head falling to one side as her eyes finally, blessedly, drifted shut. “Guess it will.”

The last thing she remembered was Abe’s voice, desperately telling her to open her eyes again, _right now_. Try as she might, she couldn’t comply with the order. She tried to apologize, but the words just wouldn’t form on her lips, and so instead, she drifted away, to a place in her mind free of all the pain and blood that’d become so familiar in just ten minutes.

-

Abe hated field hospitals with a burning passion. He’d heard too much bad news in them, lost too many friends to their operating rooms and exam tables. He really would not have minded living out the rest of his days without ever setting foot in another one again. But Harper had been shot, on his watch, no less, and she’d used some of the last words she spoke before the blood loss caused her to lose consciousness to tell Abe she was in love with him, so he was pretty much glued to his incredibly uncomfortable seat in the hospital waiting room, and that was where he’d remain until the moment she came back to them. It was the least he could do, holding vigil. Especially since he was rather in love with her, too. Not that he’d ever said it, but. Well. He only hoped and prayed he would be given the opportunity to, at some point in the very near future.

“Abraham,” Maya said in greeting, pulling him from his thoughts as she held a bottle out to him.

He took it curiously, eyes narrowing critically as he read the label. “Apple juice?”

“Apple juice,” Maya confirmed, reclaiming her seat next to him. “And before you ask, I _do_ know you’re not four years old, but it’s got sugar and carbs, and I didn’t figure you’d want to eat anything right now, so…” She nodded to the beverage. “Drink the juice before you end up passing out on the floor, will you? I really don’t want to have to explain to Harper that I couldn’t make you take care of yourself for twelve hours when she’s been doing it for the past twelve _months_.”

He drew in a deep breath at the mention of the woman’s name, then twisted the top off the bottle of juice, taking a long swallow before setting it aside and returning to staring at the too-white wall before him. “You think it’s bad news, that they’ve been in there for three hours?”

Maya answered hesitantly. “I think we always tell Marine spouses that no news is good news, and that maybe that’s what you need to hear at the moment.” She studied him for a moment, sighing when the prosecutor refused to meet her gaze. “What happened out there, Abe?”

He hung his head. “We’d checked every rooftop, except for that one,” he muttered defeatedly. “ _All of them_ , and the only reason we didn’t check that one was because we were short on time. Our witness, she needed to get out right then, and so Harper…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “She suggested we take the risk, put the girl’s safety above our own. _We’re the ones with the bulletproof vests, Abe_ , that’s what she said. _Smiled_ at me, like we were back in Quantico instead of standing in the middle of a street in a warzone, and then…” He paused once more, a single tear trailing down his cheek as he looked away once more, clearing his throat. “That bullet came out of nowhere. I still don’t know how it made it past her vest, but it did. I’ll never forget the look on her face when she realized. She stumbled, fell straight in my arms. Stared up at me like she trusted me, even though I was the reason… I mean, I brought her out here. We could’ve stayed back in Quantico, left this to the MPs, but I was so insistent on investigating it ourselves, and now…”

“Hey,” Maya interrupted sharply. “Don’t blame this on yourself, Abe. With a case like this, with so many victims… you know as well as I do that Harper never would’ve agreed with your decision to let the MPs look into this themselves, even if that’d been the call you made. She would have found her own way to Afghanistan, and she would’ve investigated this case herself, to hell with what you asked of her. If you’d made a different call, maybe you’re not out there with her when everything goes wrong. Maybe she’s all alone, without anyone to call for help. And I guarantee you that would’ve produced an outcome a whole lot worse than this one, so just… be a little easier on yourself, alright?”

“She told me she loves me,” he said, conversationally, as if the confession hadn’t completely and utterly wrecked him from the moment it’d been uttered. “I told her not to say it, that she wasn’t dying and so it wasn’t the time for deathbed confessionals, but she still… she said she loves me. Told me she wanted to say it, just so I’d know. Just in case it didn’t end up going her way.”

Maya stared at him for a moment. “Well, it _is_ going to go her way, Abe. It’s _going_ to go her way, and you two will live happily ever after. I expect to be named godmother to at least one of your children.” 

He laughed weakly. “Alright, May. If it turns out she wasn’t losing her mind due to blood loss when she said it – if it turns out she really meant it – I’ll be sure to make her aware of your conditions.”

“Oh, she meant it,” Maya said definitively, rolling her eyes when he looked over confusedly. “Maybe you can’t see things you’re too close to, Abe, but I’ve spent my fair share of time around the two of you over the past couple months too, you know. I’ve seen how she is with you, how she _looks_ at you. Believe me, she meant it. And you _wanted_ her to mean it, Abe. You love her, too.”

“I’ve never denied that I do, Maya,” he pointed out dryly, resting his head against the wall as he heaved a sigh. “She’s just… she’s a force of nature. She brings out the best in people, and she calls out the worst. Brings out the best and calls out the worst in _me_. She’s been my saving grace far more times than I could possibly count. She’s just about the best person I’ve ever met. _Of course_ , I love her. Don’t know what I’d do if I lost her.”

“You don’t have to think about what you’d do, John, because you’re _not going_ to lose her,” Maya replied resolutely. “It’s all going to work out. You’ve just got to have faith.”

He scoffed incredulously. “I’m sorry. Did you just tell me to have faith?”

“I know, I know,” Maya sighed. “It’s weird for me too. Just go with it.”

“Alright,” Abe exhaled laughingly, shooting to his feet as the surgeon who’d gone back with Harper upon their arrival came into the room.

The woman smiled kindly. “Captain Li’s surgery went well. She lost a lot of blood, so we had to transfuse her, but the damage beneath it all was actually minimal. She’ll need to take four to six weeks off to allow herself to heal, but after that, I see no reason she won’t make a complete recovery.”

Abe let out a breath he hadn’t even known he was holding. “Good. That’s… good. Thank you, Doctor,” he added hastily.

“Of course,” the physician nodded, smiling once more as she glanced between them. “She’s been asking for a Captain Abraham ever since she regained consciousness. I’m assuming that’s one of you. I can take you back to see her now if you’d like. She might be a bit loopy, still, but most of the meds should be out of her system by now. And no,” she interrupted with the answer to a question Abe had just been about to ask, “she’s not in any pain. We didn’t take away _those_ meds, don’t worry.”

Maya nudged him forward slightly, offering a sympathetic smile. “Go on then, _Captain Abraham_. You’ve been asked for, after all. I’ll call back to Quantico, let everyone know the latest.”

Abe nodded once, shooting the defense attorney a grateful look before following the doctor down the hall, attempting to keep his face as expressionless as he possibly could as they made their way toward the propped-open door of Harper’s room. As soon as he caught sight of her in the bed, though, still so pale but smiling as she glanced tiredly away from the television screen to meet his gaze, the smile that was so similar to the one she’d given him right before she was shot and on the hop over from Quantico and on dozens of other occasions throughout the past few months, and all ideas of plausible deniability left his mind as he made his way into the room, so quickly it was as if she was drawing him to her, more terrified and relieved than he’d been in longer than he could remember at the mere sight of her.

The doctor closed the door behind herself quietly, leaving them completely alone for the first time since the Humvee, when he’d been halfway convinced she was going to bleed out in his arms and she had said she loved him, like it was the simplest, most honest thing she’d ever uttered.

He was alone with her, and so in love with her, and there were a million things he wanted to say to her, and yet as he stood there, in the middle of the room, staring at her, he couldn’t get a single one of them to form on his lips.

-

Well, she hadn’t died.

It really had seemed like a close call for a second there, but according to her surgeon, the blood loss was the only real threat to her life. She’d have to take a month or so off active duty, but other than that, she was fine. She’d make a complete recovery.

And she was glad about that. She really was. She just didn’t exactly know if her relationship Abe would make the same complete recovery, after what she’d said in the Humvee.

She’d meant it. She wouldn’t have said it if she didn’t. She’d thought she was on her deathbed, after all; it really hadn’t been the time for lying. But now, with him staring at her like _that_ , like he’d known her all his life and never seen her before at the same time, she wasn’t so true if the honest words had been the words to utter in what she thought were her final moments on the planet.

She didn’t know what to say, but the look on his face suggested he didn’t know what to say, either, and it was going to get very awkward, very quickly if one of them didn’t speak soon, so Harper figured she’d just… take one for the team.

“Hi,” she settled on, after a moment of hesitation.

“Hi,” he returned immediately, smiling warmly as he drew nearer to the bed, sitting in the chair next to her bed and studying her with the sort of criticalness that could only be associated with true, unnerving concern. “How’re you doing?”

“Mm,” she hummed, smiling sleepily up at him, her thoughts still a bit hazy from the pain meds. “Well, I feel a little bit, um, a little bit floaty at the moment. I got far too excited about the Jell-O that nurse gave me a little while back, so I must still be slightly high. But other than that…” She inhaled as deeply as she dared, smile softening around the edges as she continued to stare at him. “Other than that, I am doing pretty good. How about you?” she questioned, concerned. “How’re you doing?”

The laugh he emitted in response to the question was a perfect mix of disbelieving and incredibly fond. “I’m doing just fine, Captain Li. I’m not the one who got _shot_.”

“Captain Li, huh?” she prodded teasingly, voice still soft. “Very official sounding there, _Captain Abraham_. Am I in trouble?”

He shook his head once, eyes still so serious, then sank slowly into the chair at her bedside, moving it as close to the bed as he possibly could. “No, of course not. You just scared the hell out of me out there, Li. I was…” He paused, blinking once and then clearing his throat to dispel whatever emotion he was feeling in that moment before continuing. “I was worried about you, Harper. It seemed like you were fading fast for a few minutes there.”

“Oh, well, I wasn’t going to die,” she said assuredly, smirking at him when he eyed her inquisitively. “You _did_ give me a direct order, after all.”

“And _you_ said I wasn’t the boss of you,” he reminded her, smiling slightly.

She shrugged as best she could. “Ah. Well, I decided to give you this one. For old times’ sake, right?”

“Yeah. For old times’ sake.” He cleared his throat, then glanced at the IV hanging at her bedside. “You’re not in any pain, are you? The surgeon told me you should be good for a while, but if you’re hurting, they can probably…” He gestured to the remote beside her, which allowed her to call the nurses’ station. He quickly realized, however, that it was too far for her to reach without aggravating her wound and chose to instead lean forward and grab it for her. Before he could get very far, however, Harper gently grabbed onto the sleeve of his fatigues, effectively halting his movements.

“Abe,” she murmured, smiling softly up at him, “I’m fine. I’m not in any pain.”

“Okay.” He cleared his throat, sinking back into his seat. “Alright. Well, do you need anything else? Do you need water, or…?”

“No, they took care of all that when I first woke up,” she assured him quietly, still staring up at him. “Are you sure _you’re_ alright?”

He blinked once. “Like I said, I’m fine. Why?”

“Well, you look about five seconds away from a panic attack,” she informed him honestly, injecting a bit of humor into her tone. “I’ve seen you look less scared while talking someone through disabling a _bomb_ than you do right now. I mean, I’m sure my hair’s a mess at this point, Abraham, but I didn’t think it was quite at terror-inducing levels, just yet.”

“No, it’s not that,” he assured her, smiling just slightly at her teasing. “It’s not that. It’s…”

“What I said in the Humvee?” she finished mildly, smiling sadly when his eyes met hers. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. We can chalk it up to the blood loss, if…”

“ _Was_ it because of the blood loss?” he questioned seriously, sounding more hopeful and broken in that moment than she’d ever heard him.

“No,” she answered honestly. “It wasn’t. But if telling you it was will make you stop looking at me like I terrify you, then I can pretend it was. I can do that.” It would be difficult – unimaginably so – but having Abe in her life was always the priority. It didn’t matter what capacity it was in.

“I don’t want you to pretend, Harper. I’ll never want that.”

“Then what _do_ you want?” she questioned, sounding far more cross than she’d meant to.

“I want to not know what it feels like, thinking you’re going to bleed out in my arms.” His voice wavered as he spoke, his eyes focused on a point over her shoulder, as if looking her in the eyes at that moment would simply prove to be too much for him. “I want not to know how it feels to almost lose you.”

“I’m sorry,” she said genuinely, reaching out with the hand not hooked up to the IV. She brushed her fingers gently against his cheek, smiling fragilely when he leaned into her touch, his eyes drifting shut. He turned his head to press a lingering kiss to her palm, then lifted a hand to hold hers in place before opening his eyes and, finally, allowing them to meet hers.

“Harper, you don’t ever have to say you’re sorry for being who you are,” he told her. “I wouldn’t want you to be any different than you are, because if you were, then you wouldn’t be _you_. It scared me,” he admitted softly, smiling sadly. “When you fell, I was terrified, because I don’t ever want to think about losing you, and for a minute or two there, I thought that maybe I already had.”

“You didn’t lose me, though,” she pointed out helpfully. “I mean, I’ll be out of the field for a month or two, so you’ll have to play nice with a fill-in…” She grinned at the sound of his exasperated groan, then continued, “but I’ll still be around. I live less than ten minutes away from you, remember? You’ve got a key.”

“I do have a key,” he agreed slowly, once again staring at her with that smile on the face, the one she’d thought she’d only starting seeing that day but recalled from other moments, spanning the past several months, during morning meetings and late-night strategy sessions and afternoon stops at the one diner with food they could both agree on. It was a smile that said so much without its wearer ever uttering a word. “Are you telling me I should utilize this key of mine?”

“No, I’m telling you to _use_ this key of yours,” she teased gently, stroking her thumb against his cheek as she spoke. “Nobody uses the word _utilize,_ John. Other than eighty-year-old men. And _you_ , obviously.”

“Obviously.” He stared at her for a moment longer. “When you first came to work with us, Maya used to tease me about having a crush on you.”

She arched a playful brow. “ _Did_ you have a crush on me?”

“I’m a thirty-four-year-old man, Harper. I’d like to think I haven’t had a _crush_ on anyone in about twenty years.” Despite his denial, he couldn’t help but smile fondly at her teasing. “I didn’t have a crush. It was, uh, it was more than that. You impressed me. I liked having you around. I liked that you didn’t have any issue telling me exactly what you thought of me and the way I went about doing things. I liked _you_.”

“You called me _the boot_ until we worked that case together in Somalia,” she reminded him, though she was more curious than anything. Well, curious and unbelievably fond of him, no matter what he said in the next few seconds.

He lifted the hand not covering hers, running in nervously through his already unruly hair. “Well, I might have been mature enough not to have just a crush on you, but it turns out I was _not_ mature enough not to pull on your pigtails. Uh. Your metaphorical pigtails, anyway.”

“So, what you’re saying is that you refuse to admit you had a schoolboy crush on me at the beginning, while also admitting that you used schoolboy methods to win my attention?” she questioned jokingly.

He considered that for less than half a second before nodding in agreement. “Yes, that is pretty much exactly what I’m saying.”

“I love you,” she said again, not the slightest bit of hesitation in her voice. He hadn’t said it back, but he didn’t need to. She loved him. She knew she loved him, and she wanted him to know it, too. Being shot had provided her with a sense of clarity she’d recently come to lack. She hadn’t wanted him to lose her without knowing how she felt about him. Having survived that experience, she didn’t want him to go on without knowing she still felt the same way, no matter what her blood volume was at the moment she uttered the words.

He stared at her for a moment, that half-smile transforming into something much shyer, much fonder – something so bright and beautiful that it might have hurt her eyes to look at it, if she was not so totally incapable of looking away. “I love you too,” he said simply, like it was the only truth he’d ever known.

“Good,” she breathed, eyes filling with tears as she beamed at him. “That’s… that’s good.”

“It is,” he agreed, reaching over to smooth a strand of wayward hair back from her face. “And I will be utilizing that key all the time now,” he informed her, grinning when she rolled her eyes at him.

“You only use those words to annoy me, don’t you?” she said with a long-suffering sigh that would likely have proven much more effective had she not been beaming at him.

“Maybe,” he said noncommittally, lowering their hands from his cheek and carefully intertwining their fingers before lifting their joint hands to his mouth and pressing a kiss to the back of hers. “But you’ve just openly admitted you love it.”

“I have,” she acquiesced without hesitation. “I do.”

He once again beamed at her, then stood slowly from his chair, bracing his hands on either side of her head and leaning down to press a gentle kiss to her lips. She chased his lips as he pulled away, making him laugh softly; she joined in as she lifted a hand to cup the back of his head and bring him back down to her level.

And if it was only when the monitors began beeping like crazy that they finally came up for air, laughing breathlessly and smiling at each other in that way that only those completely in love with one another could… well, if it was only then that they finally decided that perhaps there was briefly more of a need for air than there was for kissing, then neither of them really thought that it was anybody’s business but their own.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally meant to be much more angsty, and then I decided I couldn't do that to them. So, I hope you've enjoyed the product of my complete lack of willpower when it comes to writing anything that's genuine angst.


End file.
